


Podría Ser Peor

by SegaBarrett



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Backstory, El Camino - Freeform, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Deaths, Minor Character Deaths, implied former child abuse, threat of deportation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 03:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21068123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: There is something off about Sonia’s employer.





	Podría Ser Peor

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own anything from BB or El Camino and I make no money from this. 
> 
> A/N: I would like to apologize to anyone who speaks Spanish for my awful attempts at Spanish here.

Her employer is an odd duck, that much is for sure. Sonia doesn’t get paid to ask questions, though, and she doesn’t. It could be worse. 

Todd lets her come in late on Sundays so she can go to church and talk with Mariana, whose granddaughter just ended up dead in some kind of drive by and is now raising her 8 year old great grandson just like she raised his mother. 

They used to be friends back in Mexico, side by side in Catholic school girl uniforms, smiling and deciding that if they could grasp an opportunity they would. 

Cleaning the overly pastel apartment of a boy young enough to be her own grandson isn’t what she had in mind. 

But it could be worse. 

She sends $300 of her $500 a week wage back home to Guadalajara, to the little house where her own granddaughter is raising two sons with her husband, and another $100 to Juan out in Chiapas who keeps telling her that the next time he won’t take it because he has a really good idea this time, a really good one. 

The last really good idea had the Federales breathing down his neck, so she sure hopes not. 

What led this child to paint the entire place like he was welcoming a baby boy instead of decorating a bachelor pad? Sonia sighs and reaches down to dust the extensive snowglobe collection. Every single one has a figure that resembles her sandy-haired employer, but the other figures change over time - a blue-clad woman on a tea cup, a child on a dirt bike, and a looming blonde woman holding a baby. He buys more and more each week, and she dutifully dusts then off and arranges them meticulously. 

It could be worse. 

She busies herself with making Todd’s bed on the day that he opens the door and a reed-thin older man comes barreling in, slapping his back and hooting, telling Todd he better get his ass in the car right now, Toddy, cause this strip club is like nothing he ever seen before. She lets herself out and she never brings it up, though Todd ought to know better than to go to a place like that. Some boys just don’t have any guidance these days. Or girls either, that’s how Mariana buried both her grandchildren and couldn’t find her daughter for either funeral. 

It could, most certainly, be worse, and so when Todd starts to ask her for advice in wooing a “real lady”, she gives him as much as she can using the English phrases it’s safe to use. 

He thanks her, and he pauses a long while and then he hugs her, and it’s awkward and clammy and there is something deeply broken in this boy that Sonia can’t put a finger on. She doesn’t allow herself to remember the time she came by early and Todd was still in bed, screaming at the top of his lungs that “you could have come two days earlier, two days earlier”, and she shook him, quieted him down because if Todd gets in trouble with the landlord again it’s walking papers for sure. 

He doesn’t seem to remember it after, and he’s back to an amiable flat line, and that’s fine. 

It could be worse. For him too. 

It must be just her imagination, but the newest snowglobe is of a girl standing on a stoop, and she looks just like Mariana did when she was in her 20’s. Sonia always thought Mariana could be a movie star or a model if she had played it right. Maybe he could tell her where he gets all of these and she could get one of her and Mariana - oh and Raquel too, and Magdalena, the whole group, before they went their separate ways.

Todd has encyclopedias though he’s not much of a reader. She guesses they were a gift, or maybe an impulse decision from a door to door salesman. Todd does seem the type who would be drawn in by such a man, oh they’re so pushy all the time and don’t take no for an answer. 

And you can’t be too careful these days. Some of these men will just push in the door and then you’ve got to deal with getting rid of them before your employer gets home. Her last boss had thrown her out on the street after she hadn’t been able to get rid of someone who wanted to demonstrate how to use a fancy vacuum cleaner. “You trying to rob me? I’ll get you deported!”

And he could have, to, so when her phone had rang and it had been the pastel-loving boy who looked like he really could have gone to college or something - maybe trade school - and he’d offered to sign all her paperwork to update her work visa then who was she to complain? 

Okay, maybe feeding the tarantula hadn’t been in the job description, but it’s not that bad. They only eat every 14 days, after all. Todd hasn’t given it a name, so she’s dubbed it Pequeña Araña, maybe not the most original idea in the world. Juan would have come up with something better. 

Feeding him isn’t in the job description either, but someone has to. Each day, she goes to the market and brings back rice and chicken and pork and makes huge meatballs, fried chicken and empanadas. 

Today, the entire apartment is sparkling and the encyclopedias are peeking out at her all over again. In their last phone call, Juan had mentioned that even she could go to college. 

What would she do with that? She chuckles and runs a careful finger over the edges and finds a volume. M. 

Mariana. 

Magdalena. 

Mexico. 

She cracks it open and stares inside. 

When she approaches Todd, who is blissfully watching the Country Music Awards, she catches a glimpse of the latest snowglobe. 

A tiny man with a shaved head, inside a box. With the Todd finger standing above. 

Sonia sighs and walks in front of Todd. 

“Mijo,” she pleads, and opens the book.


End file.
